A remarkable example of deconstruction is provided by the definition of ‘female’ proposed by Andrea Long Chu, an American transwoman and author of Females: A Concern, published in 2019. ‘Everybody is female, and everybody hates it,’ writes Chu. ‘Femaleness is a universal sex defined by self-negation . . . I’ll define as female any psychic operation in which the self is sacrificed to make room for the desires of another . . . [The] barest essentials [of femaleness are] an open mouth, an expectant asshole, blank, blank eyes.’
